Honestly it was just badly designed all around. The objectives were not particularly fun to do, it was never clear how to actually win or what anything actually did for you. Just, not well thought out. You compare it to any other sort of similar BG like AV or Wintergrasp or whatever and it's pretty intuitive what you need to do (and anything else is spelled out with quests or whatever). Ashran just isn't. I still to this day do not know what the whole Alliance/Horde has the Advantage thing means (or whatever that message was.. maybe it was about winning a round or something).
AV is probably a bad example given they neutered it so hard from its original incarnation that it is a joke. Sure it's technically intuitive still, but not in a fun way - it's just a race course, with the only additional strategy being occasionally squabbling over back-capping the two towers closest to center whenever anyone decides to feel like doing it. It's awful, but Blizzard is fine with it somehow.
The additional irony is that they then went on to create Isle of Conquest to try to bring back that original feeling of a large-scale strategic battleground, but still let AV completely languish in the state they left it in.
+2
Warlock82Never pet a burning dogRegistered Userregular
Honestly it was just badly designed all around. The objectives were not particularly fun to do, it was never clear how to actually win or what anything actually did for you. Just, not well thought out. You compare it to any other sort of similar BG like AV or Wintergrasp or whatever and it's pretty intuitive what you need to do (and anything else is spelled out with quests or whatever). Ashran just isn't. I still to this day do not know what the whole Alliance/Horde has the Advantage thing means (or whatever that message was.. maybe it was about winning a round or something).
AV is probably a bad example given they neutered it so hard from its original incarnation that it is a joke. Sure it's technically intuitive still, but not in a fun way - it's just a race course, with the only additional strategy being occasionally squabbling over back-capping the two towers closest to center whenever anyone decides to feel like doing it. It's awful, but Blizzard is fine with it somehow.
The additional irony is that they then went on to create Isle of Conquest to try to bring back that original feeling of a large-scale strategic battleground, but still let AV completely languish in the state they left it in.
Well when I say AV I mostly mean it's original form. They gave you quests and generally explained how everything helped you - stuff like freeing the gryphon riders or summoning the big elemental bosses or even gathering rams for ram riders. It all made sense and you were directed towards all these things with an understanding of how they might help. It was also just kind of a nice idea - you didn't have to be the best at PvP but you could clear out some mobs or cap graveyards or whatever and still be contributing. (Or you could be like me and know that AV was an amazing place to mine Thorium ). I mean, old AV had issues with battle length but it was still fun as hell. And Ashran SHOULD have fixed this one problem with the whole drop in/drop out thing it did (which still had awful queue times, not to mention having to go there to queue for some assanine reason). But it was just so garbage that no one wanted to do it anyways
If it were my game, and I had unlimited resources to do this, I am of the opinion that the only way to make WoW PVP any good is to completely go back to the start, tear out all the fundamental Everquest-style combat that the game is built on, and rebuild it as a new game in more of an RTS-ARPG style like Diablo or a MOBA. Basically they'd have to make WoW 2. I don't think the current systems are salvageable into a fun PVP game.
0
Kai_SanCommonly known as Klineshrike!Registered Userregular
Ok guys, we get if you don't like MMO PVP. That is fine.
Some people do.
Just like please, stop acting like it should be gone because you don't like it. Stop acting like you are the one true opinion on it. While it has pretty much hit the crapper in WoW, it doesn't mean it sucks all around. MMO PVP can be good and in WoW even it used to be.
If you don't like it, just accept it is you and others who do like it have valid reasons for doing so, and that is fine.
Ok guys, we get if you don't like MMO PVP. That is fine.
Some people do.
Just like please, stop acting like it should be gone because you don't like it. Stop acting like you are the one true opinion on it. While it has pretty much hit the crapper in WoW, it doesn't mean it sucks all around. MMO PVP can be good and in WoW even it used to be.
If you don't like it, just accept it is you and others who do like it have valid reasons for doing so, and that is fine.
THe problem is that it competes with dev time with PvE, and yet it's still hilariously bad THIRTEEN years later. They have never gotten it right, and no amount of new iterations will fix that.
I mean like, on a fundamental level. Just queuing for skirmishes last week, I had easily 30% of my matches end up with uneven players. And that's during the week event, when queues should be at their busiest. That's some busted stuff right there, and I'd be legit embarrassed to have anything to do with it. At the absolute least the arena should instantly shut down and toss players some honor for wasting everyone's time.
And as stated before: the MI got way more viewership than Arena ever has. It's a terrible spectator sport: difficult to follow unless you are REALLY into Arena at a high level. So there's absolutely no future for WoW as an esport. If there was, the scene would have taken off within the past decade. So that angle is effectively a dead end and not worth arguing.
I don't say this happily. I'd rather have good, functional PvP than no PvP. But as someone who has slogged through it many times...it has never worked.
+2
Warlock82Never pet a burning dogRegistered Userregular
edited November 2017
I think the problem with WoW as an eSport is that the player combat is inherently boring to watch. Two people bumping up to each other and spamming abilities that largely look the same from a distance. I mean, there isn't anything all that exciting from a visual standpoint there and most combat is "stun and burst down" or something along those lines. It's not like a dungeon boss or whatever that has flashy moves and half of the viewing experience is watching the players dodge attacks or do different mechanics. There's no tension with, say, HP levels since PvP fights end so fast. So I can see why the MI would have better viewership. There's just more to actually look at there.
Honestly if PvP eSports involved battlegrounds and not boring arena maybe it'd get more viewers too. At least that's closer to a sport with things like capture the flag or point control. There's an actual field to interact with there.
Kai_SanCommonly known as Klineshrike!Registered Userregular
edited November 2017
Arenas were never great though. It was random PVP out in the wild that was always fun. Fair fights that took advantage of the environment could happen before gear went out of control.
I mean, for fair competitive PVP WoW was never good, and some of the most successful MMO PVP went away from any kind of progression whatsoever to make it fun. I think that is why WoW has never been good at it. But I still think there was plenty of entertainment in PVP back in the very least Vanilla, and I know I had fun with it in Wrath. I didn't stick with TBC long enough to know for sure but I at least enjoyed Arenas then. They were not a spectator sport and were not good for anyone who wanted to take it super seriously. But they could be fun.
I have never been of the opinion that BGs were good though. I always hated almost all of them and the only time I could get into them was when I leveled a char through early Cata almost entirely there. I think they hit a sweet spot then where leveling in PVP was valid but slightly worse than PVE. Which for me, was better because I had more fun and didn't have to think about how to do all those quests. I just queued up, played the game, and leveled. That was likely the bulk of my Cata play time too. Then, the second I hit max level, the BGs were terrible again. The thing about leveling PVP was all the ridiculous stuff classes get isn't quite there yet, so they work. I don't think I could get into details exactly why as I don't feel like going full research, but its the same reason it worked earlier in the games lifespan overall. But I agree somewhat with Bobkins. It worked but was never great. I myself have fond memories of it, but I understand it was never a driving force for the game.
Kai_San on
+2
Warlock82Never pet a burning dogRegistered Userregular
To be fair too, PvP was a total afterthought. Honor and battlegrounds weren't added until like patch 1.6 or something in Vanilla.
I do agree that I think more objective based stuff works better for this kind of PvP. It's too hard to keep each class balanced. Makes more sense (to me) to do things that work with each class's strengths to work together as a team, like a dungeon or raid setting. Again, this should have been what Ashran was, but sadly was not
I tried arenas several times in WoW and loathed PVP in the game. It got to the point where I thought I just didn't like PVP in MMOs. Recently however, I've tried "The Feast" 4 on 4 pvp in FFXIV which involves 1 tank, 1 healer, 1 ranged and 1 melee dps on each team. All characters are given standardized pvp abilities for their class/role and have standardized HP/MP and other statistics depending on their role/class. Damage/heals are balanced out such that it is extremely difficult to burst down 1 person solo and if the healer is on top of their game, they can often keep a person alive against the entire other team. CC effects are also kept fairly short and have a period of immunity afterwards that also prevents the non-interactive nature common to much of WoW's pvp at different times. The longer global cooldown also slows things down more (and allows for cooler player animations to play, though I'm not sure how exciting it makes for non-participant viewing). The matchmaking for ranked pvp also does not allow people to queue in groups, so you avoid the pre-made problem that can drive a lot of people away from trying out the pvp. For the non-ranked, pre-mades are possible and several player run leagues have sprung up.
All of these factors combine to create a pvp system that has a real ebb and flow, allows for player skill to be the big determining factor (as well as ability to work with strangers). I have not run into a situation so far where it felt like there was nothing I could have done to prevent a death or that my contribution to the fight was meaningless. It is still mostly a side-game with a smaller community and the rewards are all prestige things like special item skins, titles, or mounts; but it still is a lot more fun than any arena pvp I've done in almost 10 years in WoW. Far too much of WoW PVP was about griefing or other unbalanced matchups, whether it be gear, class balance, composition, map layout, etc. The other thing WoW has always had problems with was the reward structure for PVP. For a long time, getting ahead in WoW PVP required you to die a lot to better geared players so you could get geared up as well, at which point you could then farm lesser geared players. Even fights were rare one on one in my experience and even team fights were even rarer.
Take from this what you will, but I was surprised after thinking I disliked PVP in MMOs to have such a similar game to WoW actually have PVP that I enjoyed enough to want to continue and improve my skills.
+2
Kai_SanCommonly known as Klineshrike!Registered Userregular
PVP in WoW was not an afterthought. They planned on it at release, and it was a part of many of their talks about the game before it was released. They took great pride in the War aspect of the factions.
It took long to be added (but it certainly must have been before 1.6). They threw in the honor ranks early, like the first patch post release I think. They did have BGs being done in Beta and a few of them didn't make it at release or ever.
Oh, there was totally PvP going on before the honor system went in.
People loved murdering the shit out of each other, even with no rewards.
(See: the Tarren Mill vs. Southshore scenario.)
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+1
Kai_SanCommonly known as Klineshrike!Registered Userregular
Tarren Mill vs Southshore started the day honor was put in. That was 100% what created that exact scenario.
Only way to get honor ranks was to kill people before BGs. So that spot ended up being the defacto place to go and mercilessly kill everything. Only issue was the honor did get divided based on people involved. I ended up getting more just picking up kills around Gadgetzan. For the first week anyway.
PVP in WoW was not an afterthought. They planned on it at release, and it was a part of many of their talks about the game before it was released. They took great pride in the War aspect of the factions.
It took long to be added (but it certainly must have been before 1.6). They threw in the honor ranks early, like the first patch post release I think. They did have BGs being done in Beta and a few of them didn't make it at release or ever.
Yeah I remember it this way as well, there were definitely developer statements about PVP being central to both the Warcraft franchise and the expectations of players that were coming over from other MMOs with PVP, IE Everquest. But the caveat here is that those were definitely more like "we would like to have PVP in some form" sentiments than "we have a good plan to make PVP fun."
They honestly tried their hardest making PVP good within the system they already had to work with, they put some serious work into the battlegrounds, and then the world PVP objectives and arenas, and then PVP zones, but it's always been second fiddle to the PVE content. It's always felt to me like they do it out of obligation to that design goal of "having PVP" rather than because it's a good idea that plays well. A square peg with the corners shaved off, awkwardly forced into the round hole of the PVE gameplay systems.
+3
HenroidMexican kicked from Immigration ThreadCentrism is Racism :3Registered Userregular
Blizzcon is coming up and all I can really hope for is Blizzard announcing a reboot of WoW now that Metzen is gone.
it is definitely the case that they have moved away from supporting pvp (particularly open/world types of pvp) as the development of the game has gone on. They were designing open-world environments specifically for pvp as late as Wrath but substantially stopped after that (aside from stuff like ashran or tol barad that're basically just larger battlegrounds.) This is probably for a variety of reasons:
1) Increasing balance disparity; in a bygone era the difference between two players who might meet in the wild was not generally very large. Two players who crossed paths in a zone were probably about the same level and relatively similar in power. This has increasingly not been the case as development has gone on, for many reasons (ilvl inflation, higher level cap, 'flex' zones, etc)
2) flight: let's just be real, freeform flight makes world pvp suck. You can't escape from enemies and a small/organized group can control a much larger area (even spanning multiple zones.)
3) Design decisions: primarily that specs should function basically the same in pve as in pvp. This is something they made a commitment to early on and only really moved off of in Legion, and has frequently forced them to make decisions that left pvp with the short end of the stick.
4) player interest: there's a bit of a feedback loop involved here obviously, but I think it's fair to say that even back when many more people were interested in playing pve exclusively than the reverse, and that has naturally directed the lion's share of the development effort.
it's fine to say that 'some people' like the traditional, early-2000s model of open world MMO pvp. My response would be to say that 1) statistically no, "some people" don't, and 2) WoW is no longer particularly well equipped to deliver that experience anyway. There are games that are trying to deliver it, or something like it, and they're tiny niche titles at best.
Eat it You Nasty Pig. on
hold your head high soldier, it ain't over yet
that's why we call it the struggle, you're supposed to sweat
+1
Dhalphirdon't you open that trapdooryou're a fool if you dareRegistered Userregular
I remember a lot of fighting around Crossroads. I'd just hang out there when I was bored on my mage.
I got a rep for being the one to kill as people really did fear me there
Back when you had to poison the kegs in southshore for Halloween I was doing it on my alts for the exp but there was a group of alliance harassing the horde to prevent them from doing it
So I tired and failed several times before I went and got my warlock and basically crub stomped them I got back my on alts and poisoned the kegs with ease the rest of the day
I still feel that even though I did not have the gear they did I had far in excess the skill
PVP in WoW was not an afterthought. They planned on it at release, and it was a part of many of their talks about the game before it was released. They took great pride in the War aspect of the factions.
It took long to be added (but it certainly must have been before 1.6). They threw in the honor ranks early, like the first patch post release I think. They did have BGs being done in Beta and a few of them didn't make it at release or ever.
Yeah I remember it this way as well, there were definitely developer statements about PVP being central to both the Warcraft franchise and the expectations of players that were coming over from other MMOs with PVP, IE Everquest. But the caveat here is that those were definitely more like "we would like to have PVP in some form" sentiments than "we have a good plan to make PVP fun."
They honestly tried their hardest making PVP good within the system they already had to work with, they put some serious work into the battlegrounds, and then the world PVP objectives and arenas, and then PVP zones, but it's always been second fiddle to the PVE content. It's always felt to me like they do it out of obligation to that design goal of "having PVP" rather than because it's a good idea that plays well. A square peg with the corners shaved off, awkwardly forced into the round hole of the PVE gameplay systems.
This is why I don't agree with it taking away from dev time. I figure that the people being given the opportunity to balance PVP are second fiddle balance team members who might not even have jobs otherwise. It has really kind of been second fiddle, and that was especially true after WOTLK where they stopped really showcasing PVP features. They did put a lot of advertising into it for Legion, but it seemed to be mostly blowharding once the release came about.
Stranglethorn was a bloodbath for level 20-30s because of all the raw materials max level people needed, so you'd often get steamrolled and camped on PvP servers.
not a doctor, not a lawyer, examples I use may not be fully researched so don't take out of context plz, don't @ me
+1
3cl1ps3I will build a labyrinth to house the cheeseRegistered Userregular
Blizzcon is coming up and all I can really hope for is Blizzard announcing a reboot of WoW now that Metzen is gone.
Why does everyone still have such a hate-on for Metzen? He hasn't been involved in major game design decisions for years and years.
Also, I would not play WoW 2 or Wow ReLoaded or whatever. I have a decade's worth of mounts, titles, and accomplishments in this account, I have no interest in starting over.
Stranglethorn was a bloodbath for level 20-30s because of all the raw materials max level people needed, so you'd often get steamrolled and camped on PvP servers.
It was also because Vanilla had a lot of zones that were meant to accomodate multiple level ranges simultaneously. Stranglethorn had quests ranging from the late 20s all the way to the early 50s if I remember right, and it was made even worse when they released a max level zone in the same area as level 30 quests
The worst thing Metzen did was to use Thrall as his author avatar and spend way too much time on him in Cata.
The things I really disliked I can't really see them retconning at this point (the WOD storyline and everything to do with Garrosh circa mid-Cata).
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reVerseAttack and Dethrone GodRegistered Userregular
They don't need to retcon the WoD storyline, but they do need to make it matter beyond just the Gul'dan stuff. Grom is back alive and still free because of bullshit, the least they can do is make SOMETHING happen with that. There's an entire other dimensional civilization of Draenei around and we're attacking the Legion in their base of power, surely some of them want in on that action.
But nope. It's not important. Let's just pretend none of that happened.
Personally, I'm OK with the WoD storyline kind of being a monster-of-the-week episode of an otherwise-serialized TV show. I feel like the WoW storyline has so much going on in it, has so many parts at odds with other parts, that I don't mind having a one-off expansion that doesn't feed into the main storyline. I really enjoyed WoD - the storyline, the zones, the characters, etc - and am content with that experience being a black box in the narrative.
If we're talking about dungeons, I thought Grimrail Depot was one of the coolest concepts in the game.
Yes and pretty hard when it was released. I enjoyed that a good bit was a pretty neat concept well executed. I liked a lot about WOD but it really makes no damn sense in how it fits with the rest of wow and how other than gul'dan just seems like an afterthought. Build yup Yrell and now we are fighting the legion on argus why the hell is she not with us.
0
HenroidMexican kicked from Immigration ThreadCentrism is Racism :3Registered Userregular
Blizzcon is coming up and all I can really hope for is Blizzard announcing a reboot of WoW now that Metzen is gone.
What is it you are wanting a reboot to accomplish?
Namely bring all the dragon aspects back instead of having them killed off for the sake of loot in an MMO. Also maybe dial back the Legion, as far as what it is and how persistent the threat it is. And also dial back the "Old Gods!" explanation behind every villain that ever was and will be.
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reVerseAttack and Dethrone GodRegistered Userregular
Dragon aspects were boring, Legion's 'bout to be dealt with, and the Old Gods are next on the chopping block.
Personally, I felt that the Aspects losing power and influence over the world was more interesting than them just always hanging around to clean up after us. It's some measure of story progress in a genre of game that historically has been stagnant in the story department.
I think that it's a bit exhausting that every time we fight a villain, a bigger one - the real danger to all time and space! - steps out from behind a curtain (it's like watching DBZ all over again), but I wonder if it's inevitable in a genre like this. Not that this is an excuse for Blizzard not to try and do something different and interesting. I'm curious to see what happens if we ever take down the Void Lords. Once you've defined evils that are basically outside your cosmology, where do you go once those evils are defeated?
Managed to finish the gladiator pvp set for the rogue. In my opinion it is by far the coolest one they have created, with the horde getting the really amazing colours. Shoulders still look stupid, so away with them.
Personally, I felt that the Aspects losing power and influence over the world was more interesting than them just always hanging around to clean up after us. It's some measure of story progress in a genre of game that historically has been stagnant in the story department.
I think that it's a bit exhausting that every time we fight a villain, a bigger one - the real danger to all time and space! - steps out from behind a curtain (it's like watching DBZ all over again), but I wonder if it's inevitable in a genre like this. Not that this is an excuse for Blizzard not to try and do something different and interesting. I'm curious to see what happens if we ever take down the Void Lords. Once you've defined evils that are basically outside your cosmology, where do you go once those evils are defeated?
This is true, and from the other perspective do you really want a Forgotten Realms situation where the players are constantly not fighting the big bads and it feels like nothing you do matters?
I feel like the big mistake they made narratively on wow as a whole was pulling the trigger on burning crusade way too early. Lich king should have been first, since that was the obvious big bad from Frozen throne, then probably cataclysm and pandaria to wrap up the big stories of azeroth, then outlands/wod/burning isles/argus as a coherent arc.
To clarify, my issue with WoD was how it turned the "Orcs were mostly cool until they drank the demon blood" history into "Orcs were always ready and willing to become genocidal maniacs."
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AV is probably a bad example given they neutered it so hard from its original incarnation that it is a joke. Sure it's technically intuitive still, but not in a fun way - it's just a race course, with the only additional strategy being occasionally squabbling over back-capping the two towers closest to center whenever anyone decides to feel like doing it. It's awful, but Blizzard is fine with it somehow.
The additional irony is that they then went on to create Isle of Conquest to try to bring back that original feeling of a large-scale strategic battleground, but still let AV completely languish in the state they left it in.
Well when I say AV I mostly mean it's original form. They gave you quests and generally explained how everything helped you - stuff like freeing the gryphon riders or summoning the big elemental bosses or even gathering rams for ram riders. It all made sense and you were directed towards all these things with an understanding of how they might help. It was also just kind of a nice idea - you didn't have to be the best at PvP but you could clear out some mobs or cap graveyards or whatever and still be contributing. (Or you could be like me and know that AV was an amazing place to mine Thorium
Some people do.
Just like please, stop acting like it should be gone because you don't like it. Stop acting like you are the one true opinion on it. While it has pretty much hit the crapper in WoW, it doesn't mean it sucks all around. MMO PVP can be good and in WoW even it used to be.
If you don't like it, just accept it is you and others who do like it have valid reasons for doing so, and that is fine.
Now, BGs, sure, that's a different story. Lots of them simply should be reworked, and their recent tries to make good ones....haven't been any good.
I guess it's sort of implied that I wouldn't mind at all if the PVP you like was obliterated, that's true. Good thing for you I have no say in it!
I mean like, on a fundamental level. Just queuing for skirmishes last week, I had easily 30% of my matches end up with uneven players. And that's during the week event, when queues should be at their busiest. That's some busted stuff right there, and I'd be legit embarrassed to have anything to do with it. At the absolute least the arena should instantly shut down and toss players some honor for wasting everyone's time.
And as stated before: the MI got way more viewership than Arena ever has. It's a terrible spectator sport: difficult to follow unless you are REALLY into Arena at a high level. So there's absolutely no future for WoW as an esport. If there was, the scene would have taken off within the past decade. So that angle is effectively a dead end and not worth arguing.
I don't say this happily. I'd rather have good, functional PvP than no PvP. But as someone who has slogged through it many times...it has never worked.
Honestly if PvP eSports involved battlegrounds and not boring arena maybe it'd get more viewers too. At least that's closer to a sport with things like capture the flag or point control. There's an actual field to interact with there.
I mean, for fair competitive PVP WoW was never good, and some of the most successful MMO PVP went away from any kind of progression whatsoever to make it fun. I think that is why WoW has never been good at it. But I still think there was plenty of entertainment in PVP back in the very least Vanilla, and I know I had fun with it in Wrath. I didn't stick with TBC long enough to know for sure but I at least enjoyed Arenas then. They were not a spectator sport and were not good for anyone who wanted to take it super seriously. But they could be fun.
I have never been of the opinion that BGs were good though. I always hated almost all of them and the only time I could get into them was when I leveled a char through early Cata almost entirely there. I think they hit a sweet spot then where leveling in PVP was valid but slightly worse than PVE. Which for me, was better because I had more fun and didn't have to think about how to do all those quests. I just queued up, played the game, and leveled. That was likely the bulk of my Cata play time too. Then, the second I hit max level, the BGs were terrible again. The thing about leveling PVP was all the ridiculous stuff classes get isn't quite there yet, so they work. I don't think I could get into details exactly why as I don't feel like going full research, but its the same reason it worked earlier in the games lifespan overall. But I agree somewhat with Bobkins. It worked but was never great. I myself have fond memories of it, but I understand it was never a driving force for the game.
I do agree that I think more objective based stuff works better for this kind of PvP. It's too hard to keep each class balanced. Makes more sense (to me) to do things that work with each class's strengths to work together as a team, like a dungeon or raid setting. Again, this should have been what Ashran was, but sadly was not
All of these factors combine to create a pvp system that has a real ebb and flow, allows for player skill to be the big determining factor (as well as ability to work with strangers). I have not run into a situation so far where it felt like there was nothing I could have done to prevent a death or that my contribution to the fight was meaningless. It is still mostly a side-game with a smaller community and the rewards are all prestige things like special item skins, titles, or mounts; but it still is a lot more fun than any arena pvp I've done in almost 10 years in WoW. Far too much of WoW PVP was about griefing or other unbalanced matchups, whether it be gear, class balance, composition, map layout, etc. The other thing WoW has always had problems with was the reward structure for PVP. For a long time, getting ahead in WoW PVP required you to die a lot to better geared players so you could get geared up as well, at which point you could then farm lesser geared players. Even fights were rare one on one in my experience and even team fights were even rarer.
Take from this what you will, but I was surprised after thinking I disliked PVP in MMOs to have such a similar game to WoW actually have PVP that I enjoyed enough to want to continue and improve my skills.
It took long to be added (but it certainly must have been before 1.6). They threw in the honor ranks early, like the first patch post release I think. They did have BGs being done in Beta and a few of them didn't make it at release or ever.
People loved murdering the shit out of each other, even with no rewards.
(See: the Tarren Mill vs. Southshore scenario.)
COME FORTH, AMATERASU! - Switch Friend Code SW-5465-2458-5696 - Twitch
Only way to get honor ranks was to kill people before BGs. So that spot ended up being the defacto place to go and mercilessly kill everything. Only issue was the honor did get divided based on people involved. I ended up getting more just picking up kills around Gadgetzan. For the first week anyway.
Yeah I remember it this way as well, there were definitely developer statements about PVP being central to both the Warcraft franchise and the expectations of players that were coming over from other MMOs with PVP, IE Everquest. But the caveat here is that those were definitely more like "we would like to have PVP in some form" sentiments than "we have a good plan to make PVP fun."
They honestly tried their hardest making PVP good within the system they already had to work with, they put some serious work into the battlegrounds, and then the world PVP objectives and arenas, and then PVP zones, but it's always been second fiddle to the PVE content. It's always felt to me like they do it out of obligation to that design goal of "having PVP" rather than because it's a good idea that plays well. A square peg with the corners shaved off, awkwardly forced into the round hole of the PVE gameplay systems.
1) Increasing balance disparity; in a bygone era the difference between two players who might meet in the wild was not generally very large. Two players who crossed paths in a zone were probably about the same level and relatively similar in power. This has increasingly not been the case as development has gone on, for many reasons (ilvl inflation, higher level cap, 'flex' zones, etc)
2) flight: let's just be real, freeform flight makes world pvp suck. You can't escape from enemies and a small/organized group can control a much larger area (even spanning multiple zones.)
3) Design decisions: primarily that specs should function basically the same in pve as in pvp. This is something they made a commitment to early on and only really moved off of in Legion, and has frequently forced them to make decisions that left pvp with the short end of the stick.
4) player interest: there's a bit of a feedback loop involved here obviously, but I think it's fair to say that even back when many more people were interested in playing pve exclusively than the reverse, and that has naturally directed the lion's share of the development effort.
it's fine to say that 'some people' like the traditional, early-2000s model of open world MMO pvp. My response would be to say that 1) statistically no, "some people" don't, and 2) WoW is no longer particularly well equipped to deliver that experience anyway. There are games that are trying to deliver it, or something like it, and they're tiny niche titles at best.
that's why we call it the struggle, you're supposed to sweat
What is it you are wanting a reboot to accomplish?
I got a rep for being the one to kill as people really did fear me there
Back when you had to poison the kegs in southshore for Halloween I was doing it on my alts for the exp but there was a group of alliance harassing the horde to prevent them from doing it
So I tired and failed several times before I went and got my warlock and basically crub stomped them I got back my on alts and poisoned the kegs with ease the rest of the day
I still feel that even though I did not have the gear they did I had far in excess the skill
This is why I don't agree with it taking away from dev time. I figure that the people being given the opportunity to balance PVP are second fiddle balance team members who might not even have jobs otherwise. It has really kind of been second fiddle, and that was especially true after WOTLK where they stopped really showcasing PVP features. They did put a lot of advertising into it for Legion, but it seemed to be mostly blowharding once the release came about.
Why does everyone still have such a hate-on for Metzen? He hasn't been involved in major game design decisions for years and years.
Also, I would not play WoW 2 or Wow ReLoaded or whatever. I have a decade's worth of mounts, titles, and accomplishments in this account, I have no interest in starting over.
It was also because Vanilla had a lot of zones that were meant to accomodate multiple level ranges simultaneously. Stranglethorn had quests ranging from the late 20s all the way to the early 50s if I remember right, and it was made even worse when they released a max level zone in the same area as level 30 quests
The things I really disliked I can't really see them retconning at this point (the WOD storyline and everything to do with Garrosh circa mid-Cata).
But nope. It's not important. Let's just pretend none of that happened.
Yes and pretty hard when it was released. I enjoyed that a good bit was a pretty neat concept well executed. I liked a lot about WOD but it really makes no damn sense in how it fits with the rest of wow and how other than gul'dan just seems like an afterthought. Build yup Yrell and now we are fighting the legion on argus why the hell is she not with us.
I think that it's a bit exhausting that every time we fight a villain, a bigger one - the real danger to all time and space! - steps out from behind a curtain (it's like watching DBZ all over again), but I wonder if it's inevitable in a genre like this. Not that this is an excuse for Blizzard not to try and do something different and interesting. I'm curious to see what happens if we ever take down the Void Lords. Once you've defined evils that are basically outside your cosmology, where do you go once those evils are defeated?
I feel like the big mistake they made narratively on wow as a whole was pulling the trigger on burning crusade way too early. Lich king should have been first, since that was the obvious big bad from Frozen throne, then probably cataclysm and pandaria to wrap up the big stories of azeroth, then outlands/wod/burning isles/argus as a coherent arc.